Sunday, January 13, 2013

A stunning Red-shouldered Hawk, Buteo lineatus, peers curiously down at your narrator. I probably would have reacted the same, had some strange guy rolled up under my telephone pole and stuck a long cylindrical object out the sunroof. The mild-mannered raptor never even flew. It was one of nine Red-shouldered Hawks that Peter King and I found in our piece of turf for the Hocking Hills Christmas Bird Count, last Saturday.

Everyone has their faves, and when it comes to Buteo hawks, the Red-shouldered Hawk is hands-down my #1 pick. The bird in this photo was yet another that Peter and I found on the Hocking Hills CBC. It's easy to see how the "red-shouldered" label came to be.

This particular bird came coasting over the territory of a pair of Red-tailed Hawks, which quickly rose to push the interloper away. Red-taileds are easily the most numerous Buteo in Ohio, but in some regions Red-shouldereds are gaining ground fast, or have even eclipsed their rusty-tailed brethren. We had nine Red-shouldereds, and eight Red-taileds, on this bird count and the former outnumbering the latter has become the norm in our piece of the count.

This graph displays the upward surge in Red-shouldered Hawk numbers on the long-running Cincinnati Christmas Bird Count over the past three decades. There are peaks and valleys, but the general trend of increases is indisputable. Many other CBC's in Ohio would probably show a similar trend, at least in southern, eastern, and parts of central Ohio.

This wonderful Google earth map (thank you Google earth!) shows the section of Hocking County that Peter and I covered for the aforementioned bird count. Perfect Red-shouldered Hawk country. Red-shouldered Hawks are by and large forest dwellers, peaking in areas with a blend of older-growth woodlands, stream valleys, and occasional pastures. Their nighttime counterpart is the Barred Owl - if one of these species is present, the other likely is as well.

Hard as it is to believe these days, at one time forest cover in Ohio had been reduced to about 10%. All of those heavily forested Smokeyesque places, such as the Hocking Hills, Shawnee State Forest, Mohican State Forest, etc once resembled lunar landscapes. Forest-dependent animals such as the Red-shouldered Hawk did not fare well in those dark days of deforestation. As our forests recover and mature, the hawks are recolonizing the Ohio country in ever-increasing numbers. This is even true in heavily wooded urban and suburban 'scapes. Red-shouldered Hawks are not an uncommon sight in many wooded Columbus neighborhoods, for instance. They weren't there not all that long ago.

This is another piece of Christmas Bird Count data, showing the 30-year trend for Red-shouldered Hawks statewide. A good piece of news, to be sure, especially in light of numerous species that are going the other direction.

I find them to be fairly common in the Little Miami watershed from Clifton gorge down, but still fairly scarce in the upper Great Miami including the Mad watershed. Barred owls do seem to follow the same pattern. in the Clark County CBC history beginning 1978, Red-shouldered occurred as follows: 1985-1, 1989-1, 2012-1At least we got one this year!Barred owls 1986-1, 1988-2

They are my favorite raptor. A couple of miles from the edge of the urban park, in several palm trees, we had an abundance of Red Shouldered hawks for many years. I always listened for the keening of the fledglings in summer. With the loss of a couple of King palm trees, and a Murder of Crows moving in, I think our residents moved on to the park trees.

I don't know how to post the URL for a PDF page but I have a distribution map for them:

I live in Gahanna near the Big Walnut and we had a nesting pair in our neighborhood last year. They raised three young. The parents were seen frequently carrying food back to the nest. A snake was spotted in the talons one time and one adult tried to snatch something from our garden pond. The neighborhood enjoyed the five of them all summer.

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About Me

I am a lifelong Ohioan who has made a study of natural history since the age of eight or so - longer than I can remember! A fascination with birds has grown into an amazement with all of nature, and an insatiable curiosity to learn more. One of my major ambitions is to get more people interested in nature. The more of us who care, the more likely that our natural world will survive.

About the photos, and permission to use

All photographs on these web pages are the exclusive property of Jim McCormac, and are protected under United States and International copyright laws. The photographs may not be copied, reproduced, stored, distributed or manipulated without written permission. All rights are reserved.

If you contact me requesting free photos, the reply may be long in coming :-)

I've been taking photographs for a few decades, but never became fully interested and engaged in photography until 2003. That's when I got my first digital camera. Since then, photography has become a passion and a steadily growing addiction. If you delve back far enough into this blog, you will see photos that were made with a variety of Panasonic point & shoot bridge cameras. Then came a Canon Rebel DSLR, followed by a Nikon D7000. I've since returned to Canon, and use their gear almost exclusively. My camera bodies are a Canon 5D Mark III, which is an awesome full-frame sensor camera, and a Canon 7D Mark II. The latter is a 1.6 crop factor camera, and I use it almost exclusively for birds and distant wildlife.

The lens bag includes the following Canon lenses: 100mm f/2.8L-macro; the sensational but bizarre MP-E 65 mega-macro; a 180mm f/3.5 macro; a 16-35mm f/4L wide-angle; a 50mm f/1.4; a 100-400 f4.5/5.6 II; and a 500mm f/4L II, sometimes used with a 1.4 extender (which makes it a 700mm). I've also got a Tamron 70-200mm and Sigma 24mm Art (great lenses!). I do lots of macro, and my typical flash gear is the Canon Twin-Lite setup. If the gear needs three-legged stabilization, it is mounted on an Induro tripod, attached to an Induro Gimbal head. Finally, I've got a GoPro Hero, which is fully waterproof and can be used for underwater work. Sometimes I even use the camera or video feature on my iPhone 5S smartphone - it's amazing how good phone cameras have become.

Speaking, guiding gigs 2016

NOTE: Click on listed events for details (inmost cases).

January 16, 2016 - Ohio Ornithological Society's annual winter raptor day at the Wilds, Muskingum County, Ohio. Leading field trip.